


The Sins of the Father

by Piinutbutter



Category: Edward Edward - Lolah Burford
Genre: Angst, Dysfunctional Relationships, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-11 12:10:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20545937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piinutbutter/pseuds/Piinutbutter
Summary: Edward's father was a fool to even entertain the idea that Edward could live a normal life.





	The Sins of the Father

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aquatics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aquatics/gifts).

> I tried to tag this as best I could without under- or over-selling the content warnings, because there's not anything truly explicit here. Just, y'know, all the background terribleness from their in-canon relationship. :D

It was a fair midsummer morning, and the streets were rife with the myriad joys and frustrations of human mingling. No one paid undue attention to the two men marching briskly down the road. One was old and one young, but it was the younger gentleman who appeared in the winter of his life. The smile on his pale face was lifeless as he stumbled along, led by a stern grip on his wrist.

“You can release me, you know,” Edward said with empty pleasantness, attempting to keep pace with his father’s long strides.

“Absolutely not,” his guardian replied. “I’ll look away for two heartbeats and you’ll have thrown yourself under a passing carriage.”

Edward practically pouted. Unbecoming for his age, but luckily the Earl hadn’t turned around to see it. “It was an accident. I told you it was.”

“You’ve told me many things, Edward.” It was not an answer, but Edward had come to both expect and accept as much from the man who’d been the axis of his life for the last twenty years.

“I will never understand this penchant for hurting yourself,” the Earl said once they reached the privacy of his carriage. “Is it rebellion? You are far too old to be throwing tantrums. And I am far too old to be chasing you around town and cleaning up your messes.” This, he said as he unwrapped his fingers from Edward’s wrist, revealing the wound there. The cut alone wasn’t deep enough to be deadly, but he’d been with Edward long enough to know that these things tended to snowball where the boy was concerned. 

“My hand slipped,” Edward protested as the Earl took to wrapping the damage under a bandage. “I really had every intention of enjoying a nice picnic. I suppose you’ll forbid me from the fruit knives at home, now?”

“Edward, I have half a mind to forbid you from leaving your room unattended. Although, I suppose you could find something in there to turn against yourself as a weapon. Need I find another priest-hole?”

He spoke in anger and jest, but the effect on his son was immediate. Edward’s free hand clutched at the Earl, pulling him close like a drowning man clinging to flotsam. “Holland, no, you wouldn’t _dare_-”

The better side of the Earl told him to pull Edward into his arms and reassure him. The Earl hadn’t made a habit of listening to that side of himself.

“I would,” he snapped, “if you don’t stop acting like a fool. For God’s sake, Edward, what drives you to behave this way? You’re a grown man. I no longer impress my whims upon you. You have an education, an inheritance, a wife-”

“I don’t,” Edward interrupted, so quietly the Earl was unsure if he’d heard correctly. 

“Speak up, boy.”

“I don’t. Have a wife, that is. Anne and I, we...we talked.”

The Earl dropped Edward’s wrist and pried Edward’s desperate fingers from his coat. He pressed his fingers to his temples, and tried his damnedest to control his temper. He was trying to be better to Edward, he truly was. “After all I did to ensure you would leave me and stay with the woman you claimed to love - what happened this time to spurn your heart? Did she stray? I can’t say it would surprise me, given her willingness to entertain strange highwaymen’s affections-”

“Nothing like that!” Edward said. “I did love her. I still do. But not as I once did. Holland, you must understand: I cannot love anyone now. Not with what I am. Anne is a fine woman. A fine friend. She was a fine - if troublesome - false cousin. She will be a fine wife, for another man. She does not deserve to have a whore for a husband.”

The Earl dug his fingers deeper into the pulsing veins beneath his skin. “You do so love to speak ill of yourself.”

“Those are not my own words. Anne’s brother assessed me as such: My father’s whore. Was he wrong?”

He wasn’t, but the Earl knew to admit so would be to indulge his son’s troublesome mood. So he remained silent and let Edward fill the silence with further discord, as he was wont to do.

“And he was not the only Armstrong to pin the label on me, either. The source of Anne’s hatred for you, the genesis of her vengeful path - you killed her father because he sensed our shame.”

“If you are going to harp on about that, I’d prefer you bring the Lady Armstrong in here to lash me with her own tongue. Her impudent rage is entertaining in its futility, at the least.”

“That is not the point of my dredging up the past. What I want to know is: How did he _know?_ You are so careful with your public face, Holland. I cannot believe his suspicion would originate from your words or your actions.”

“Edward-”

“And so it must have been me. You’ve tainted me, Holland, blatantly and irredeemably so.” Edward jabbed a righteous finger at him. “I wear our sin on my sleeve. That is the only way I can think to explain how everyone in my life seemed to know what I was before I understood it myself.”

Edward held up his wounded hand to count the evidence off on his bloodstained fingers. “Harriett. Anne. George. Ross - oh lord, Ross! You asked me why I cried his name as you struck me? Looking back, I could laugh at the irony.” Edward’s voice was growing too loud for the small carriage. “He was the first, I think, to brand me a whore, and abuse me as one. God,” Edward doubled over with laughter, now well and truly indulging in his hysteria, “even Alleyn could see it! I don’t know how. That was before I - before we even..._God_, Holland. You made a right mess of me.”

Edward slid from his seat and knelt in the small space between them, as if to pray. He rested his head in the Earl’s lap and spoke the rest of his tirade into the crisp, expensive fabric of his trousers.

“And now you cast me out and tell me to marry, to forget you, to have a normal life when I have gone and barred myself from anything the sort the moment I let you ravish me?” There had been no blood on Edward’s face, so the wetness dripping onto the Earl’s leg must have been tears. “No, Holland. No. You’d be better off ordering me to a nunnery. You’ve made me what I am, and if paternal responsibility doesn’t move you to reap the seeds you’ve sown, I hope to God at least a sense of guilt will do the job.”

The Earl sighed and reached down to stroke Edward’s fair hair, calming him like the flighty animal he was. “Have you ever known me to feel guilt, Edward?”

“No, but-”

“Then that is your answer.” 

He saw the beginnings of a sob in the hitching movement of Edward’s slender shoulders. The boy was a damned waif. He would need to get the kitchen to feed him more, and Edward would likely refuse the food or rid himself of it unless the Earl was there to ensure he ate properly, and...really, what would Edward do without him? He’d been a fool to push Edward out to sea and expect him to swim.

That turn of phrase brought something from his memories. He took Edward’s face in his hands and forced him to meet his gaze. “You say I’ve tainted you. Tell me, is that what you were thinking of, the day you tried to drown yourself? I thought you were trying to run from me, but perhaps you were trying to give yourself a baptism, little Methody. Cleanse yourself of our sins, as you put them.”

“I don’t know,” Edward answered, his pale eyes cloudy and wet. “I don’t remember that day.”

“Is that a lie, Edward?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know. Does it matter?”

The Earl leaned over Edward, trying in some perverse way to protect him from the outside world, when both father and son knew the real danger came from their own wicked hands. Edward melted into his embrace, content to play along with the illusion.

“I suppose not.”


End file.
